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George harrison
George Harrison, MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001), was an English musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the band's primary songwriters, most of their albums included at least one Harrison composition, including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", which became the Beatles' second-most-covered song. Harrison's earliest musical influences included Big Bill Broonzy, George Formby and Django Reinhardt; Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry and Ry Cooder were significant later influences. By 1965 he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". He developed an interest in the Hare Krishna movement and became an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, introducing them to the other members of the Beatles and their Western audience by incorporating Indian instrumentation in their music. After the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, from which two hit singles originated. He also organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Ravi Shankar, a precursor for later benefit concerts such as Live Aid. Harrison was a music and film producer as well as a musician; he founded Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founded HandMade Films in 1978. Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer, and in 1988 co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Harrison's first marriage, to Pattie Boyd, ended in divorce in 1977. The following year he married Olivia Trinidad Arias, with whom he had one son, Dhani. Harrison died in 2001, aged 58, from lung cancer. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India, in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition. He left almost £100 million in his will. life after the Beatles knife attack ''' On 30 December 1999, 36-year-old Michael Abram broke into the Harrisons' Friar Park home and attacked Harrison with a kitchen knife, puncturing a lung and causing head injuries before Olivia Harrison incapacitated the assailant by striking him repeatedly with a poker and a lamp. Following the attack, Harrison was hospitalized with more than forty stab wounds. He released a statement soon after regarding his assailant: "he wasn't a burglar, and he certainly wasn't auditioning for the Traveling Wilburys." '''Illness and Death In 1997, Harrison was diagnosed with throat cancer and treated with radiotherapy, which was thought at the time to be successful. In May 2001 it was revealed that he had undergone an operation to remove a cancerous growth from one of his lungs, and in July, it was reported that he was being treated for a brain tumour at a clinic in Switzerland. While in Switzerland, Starr visited him, but had to cut his stay short to travel to Boston, where his daughter was undergoing emergency brain surgery, prompting Harrison to quip: "Do you want me to come with you?" In November 2001, he began radiotherapy at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City for lung cancer that had spread to his brain. When the news was publicized, Harrison bemoaned his physician's breach of privacy, and his estate later claimed damages.On 12 November, the three living former Beatles met for the last time at Harrison's hotel in New York for lunch. Harrison died on 29 November 2001, aged 58, from metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. He was cremated at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers near Varanasi, India, by his close family in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition. He left almost £100 million in his will. Harrison's final album, the posthumously released Brainwashed (2002), was completed by his son Dhani and Jeff Lynne.] Included in the album's liner notes is a quotation from the Bhagavad Gita: "There never was a time when you or I did not exist. Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be."A media-only single, "Stuck Inside a Cloud", which Leng described as "a uniquely candid reaction to illness and mortality", achieved number 27 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. The single "Any Road", released in May 2003, reached number 37 on the UK Singles Chart. "Marwa Blues" went on to receive the2004 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, while "Any Road" was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Beliefs By the mid-1960s Harrison had become an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, introducing it to the other Beatles. During the filming of Help! in the Bahamas, they met the founder of Sivananda Yoga, Swami Vishnu-devananda, who gave each of them a signed copy of his book, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga. Between the end of the last Beatles tour in 1966 and the beginning of the Sgt Pepper recording sessions, he made a pilgrimage to Bombay with his wife Pattie, where he studied sitar, met severalgurus, and visited various holy places. In 1968 he travelled to Rishikesh in northern India with the other Beatles to study meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His talks on hinduism: Krishna actually was in a body as a person ... What makes it complicated is, if he's God, what's he doing fighting on a battlefield? It took me ages to try to figure that out, and again it was Yogananda's spiritual interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita that made me realise what it was. Our idea of Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield in the chariot. So this is the point—that we're in these bodies, which is like a kind of chariot, and we're going through this incarnation, this life, which is kind of a battlefield. The senses of the body ... are the horses pulling the chariot, and we have to get control over the chariot by getting control over the reins. And Arjuna in the end says, 'Please Krishna, you drive the chariot' because unless we bring Christ or Krishna or Buddha or whichever of our spiritual guides ... we're going to crash our chariot, and we're going to turn over, and we're going to get killed in the battlefield. That's why we say Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, asking Krishna to come and take over the chariot.